Love Story
by SSBB.Swords
Summary: It was easy to ignore the long legs, soft curves, and scraps of lost clothing when he was so in love with the club owner. [Modern AU] -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-
1. Invert

_**Author's Notes:**_ _Uhm, so life hasn't been great, and I thought maybe I'd feel better if I started writing again._

 _Ten years and IkeMarth still doesn't have a strip club fic? Huh, weird._

 _Well, here you go. :P_

 _Please enjoy this gratuitously cliché summer read._

 _ **Warnings:**_ _The usual host of yaoi, slash, shounen-ai, etc. Cursing. Implications all around. Rated M for solid reasons but not solid enough. Un-beta'd._

 _ **Pairing(s):**_ _IkeMarth._

 _ **Disclaimer:**_ _I don't own Super Smash Brothers._

 _ **Summary:**_ _It was easy to ignore the long legs, soft curves, and scraps of lost clothing when he was so in love with the club owner. [Modern AU] -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-_

* * *

Love Story

Chapter 1: Invert

By SSBBSwords

* * *

Most people thought any guy who worked at a strip club just reveled in the endless bath of free shows, but this wasn't exactly his scene. However, he was great at spotting trouble and tossing said trouble out doorways, so he spent most of his workday eyeing the customers for any shady business. The ladies co-existed harmoniously for the most part, but now and then, he had to haul semi-naked, upset women away from each other.

He was but a peon in this lucrative strip club business, so he originally assumed the club owner only stayed on site to fulfill their sleazy destiny—free shows and "perks"—but he had yet to see Marth lay a sketchy hand on any of the employees. There was something unearthly about the guy. The owner was preternaturally calm despite the sundry collection of threats from every possible direction. How Marth didn't even bat an eye at a ransacked office, unhinged patron, or aggressive officer was beyond his understanding.

In addition to the man's unflapping reserve, there was no indication that the guy was in it just to make a quick few bucks. There was no metaphorical revolving door, no overhead fees, no unspoken special (i.e. illegal) treatments. Dancers didn't have to rent their stage time or tip other employees out of their hard-earned dollars. Between running the place like a non-profit organization and the extensive staff, the club owner had to be hemorrhaging money, right? But he didn't major in business, so he really didn't know.

He wasn't describing Marth quite like the guy deserved, which was ironic, because he was unequivocally in love with the man. See, this was the age-old tale of a starry-eyed youth who fell in love with the strip club owner and was then whisked off to their Happily Ever After. The big difference was that he wasn't a stripper, and the owner hadn't spoken more than a couple hundred words to him since the start of his employment.

But there were some similarities. He probably did get a little starry-eyed, and compared to the owner, he was younger, but he was also the larger and more built of the two, so to be realistic, Marth would not be sweeping _him_ off his feet, because as a security guard, he likely had fifty pounds on the guy.

It didn't take long for his illustrious colleagues to notice; after all, they were mostly women and an amassment of that amount of intuition meant he could hide nothing. There wasn't a day that he didn't get teased at least once, to the point that even the petite brunet DJ, whose enthusiastic remixing saved them from a hell of Top 20 Stripper Songs on repeat, played unrequited love songs when the owner appeared outside of the office. So yeah, he might shoot more than a couple glares at oh-so-(fakely)-innocent Pit.

However, the insinuations were subtle and easily disregarded, and his job was a dream, so he wasn't going to rock the boat and get his heart broken in the process. So yes, pining from afar was fine with him.

A little crush never hurt anybody, right? He _felt_ harmless. He wasn't about to dig through the guy's garbage or digital footprint. He caught snippets of information from the other employees though: the chef knew the owner from business school; his favorite dancer proclaimed Marth a good listener; and the too-snarky lawyer was the self-proclaimed best friend. He rarely heard anything derogatory about his crush, which was an unbelievably juvenile label that juxtaposed the wayward thoughts he had about the man.

It was incongruous that he could watch carefully cultivated costumes come undone under flattering lights and pumping bass without breaking a sweat, but just seeing more than the usual buttons on the owner's dress shirt open was enough to back him out of the office mumbling nonsense just to get away. That was one of the worst days in work history: the air-conditioning was on the fritz, and although the owner got it running before the first performer (because nothing spelled death faster than slippery poles), he had run into nearby furniture because Marth had toned forearms under rolled up sleeves that he wanted to grip and dexterous hands that he dreamed gripped him.

He _tried_ to keep his imagination generic, but preference was preference, and he really was quite enamored with the club owner. In order to keep his staring to a minimum, he had even mastered how to fleet a glance like the best of them. The most pressing issue was the _guilt_. There wasn't anything wrong with being attracted to a very attractive man; no, it was the fact that he couldn't have a normal conversation with Marth without buckling from under-collar guilt because he too frequently pictured his employer in various stages of undress.

No amount of healthy respect for the man seemed to cancel out the dirty mental images his libido produced. He probably had the best spank bank material outside of the porn industry, but there was something about how feminine bodies moved that didn't quite translate to a male body, because Marth wasn't curvy or bodacious or svelte. The club owner didn't have his bulk, but there was something about that elegant shift of muscle beneath the dress shirts and pants that made his head spin.

He wanted that body writhing beneath his on a mattress. He wanted his boss straddling him on a chair. He wanted the man rubbing against him on the edge of a table. And he wanted that perfect face and pretty eyes between his legs.

He was damn grateful that the club owner never seemed to spare him a glance unless he was specifically needed for something, because with the minimal interaction, he could complete his work with a straight face, his reel of favorite mental images clamped down and unreadable to the outside world.

Everyone could speculate and tease him until his very last breath, but he was taking this secret to the grave. So for six days a week, he walked into the club; made his greetings, his small talk, his good nights; and went home to fall asleep with sometimes a very tired hand. And for seven days a week, he dreamed of very questionable decisions and abstract reactions and intimate positions.

* * *

From his dark-fringed second-floor post, he watched the dancer below levitate her body parallel to the floor halfway up the pole before rolling forward in a dive that had her fans hollering at the panache and adrenaline rush, and he just thought that sort of acrobatic strength was wasted on this clientele.

At the edge of his vision, the office door opened and a dark figure exited like sweeping fog. After a practiced tug and twist to check the locking mechanism, the owner stalked down the narrow hall and stopped by his side, hands folding over each other to rest on the railing overlooking the main floor.

It was times like this that he was grateful his main job description was to watch the patrons and other employees, and therefore he had a valid excuse to avoid eye contact with the other man.

"How are things?" the owner asked, adopting a casual slouch to match the perfunctory rhetoric that hung between them.

He refused to look away from the stage, because this was an unintentional trap. Marth had an occasional habit of dropping the stiff posture in favor of atypical nonchalance, which most people interpreted as friendliness, but the languid body language made everything worse. And he wasn't about to discuss what his hormones made of his boss' jungle cat fluidity with _his damn boss standing right next to him._

"Good," he answered with no plans to elaborate further. Some days he opted with _fine_ or, when feeling particularly bold, _nothing's on fire_ , because that sometimes got a chuckle out of Marth, and who didn't like making their crush smile?

Like pre-recorded script, the other echoed, "Good," and moved away to the adjacent stairs to descend to ground level.

He chanced a surreptitious glance at the owner's retreating back and heaved a sigh of relief. That went well. Nothing out of the ordinary and no one the wiser.

In the lull between performances, he tracked the other's circuit around the room. The club owner rarely spent extensive time on the main floor—enough to have a sense of whether a manager or employee's suggestion or grievance had any merit, but not long enough to be an unnecessary fixture distracting from the dancers. Marth stopped by a few unoccupied regulars and would, in turn, get stopped by employees not currently engaged in a client. There was always something a little funny when a dancer in eight-inch heels approached their employer to say hello; even from this distance, he could see how the man took an understated step back to angle away from the heightened breasts.

Just below, the stripper in reference looked straight up at him and blew a kiss. Caught red-handed, he jerked his head in terse acknowledgment. Before he could redirect his eyes, the owner had followed the woman's line of sight and turned toward him as well. With a short laugh, the man concluded the conversation with a polite kiss to the lady's hand. Yeah, no wonder they loved the owner so much.

He knew the importance of his responsibilities, but that still failed to prevent him from watching Marth instead of the floor during the next performance. The other man was observing the dancer from near the kitchen service entry, and never for a moment did those eyes hint of anything but technical analysis. The girls could tease him for his one-sided attraction, but their employer's apparent asexuality was no joke, and at times like this, he was amazed by his own imagination for creating such fantasies from thin air.

* * *

"How long do you think you can keep this up?" the lawyer asked him point-blank with narrowed eyes of blatant judgment.

Considering this was the guy who gleaned boatloads of incriminating evidence to defend the club owner against multiple subpoenas and lawsuits, his first and only reaction was a frisson of panic. What did they find on him? (and they still hired him anyway? was this his final notice? were lawyer-best-friends allowed to fire employees?)

"Dude, you okay?" Roy desultorily snapped twice before his blank face. "For a guy whose career rides on intimidation, you sure are skittish."

He cleared his throat, steeling himself. He went for the safest tactic: denial. "I don't know what you mean."

With an exasperated sigh, the lawyer declared, "You're big, not dumb." The man looked seconds away from an eye roll, a stiff drink, or both. "Can we _please_ talk about your poorly hidden crush on Marth?"

 _This was not happening._ Curbing the knee-jerk urge to run, he retorted, "This isn't high school."

"No," the other agreed with a tightening jaw, "but we are all mature adults and Ike, the UST is _insane_. The number of erections occurring under this roof is nothing compared to your repressed _whatever_ with Marth."

He automatically refuted, "I don't have anything with Marth." _With_ Marth? Yeah, he had a repressed something _toward_ his boss, but _with_ was the wrong preposition, and Roy was supposed to be a very intelligent guy.

With a frustrated headshake, the lawyer bit out, "Yeah, river in Egypt, man. Can I maybe convince you to—I don't know, indulge my wild ideas for a second—maybe ask Marth out?" Grimacing like this was low-level torture, the redhead added, "I cannot believe I have to sell this so hard."

"We can't," he asserted.

"Uh-huh," Roy responded, sarcasm barely tempered by lack of inflection. "Why's that?"

"I work for him." Wasn't it obvious? Visualizing bending the guy over the nearest surface was one thing. Actually shoving someone with authority over him down was a whole different story.

"We all do," the other pointed out like he was a slow child. "You haven't noticed he compartmentalizes his work and personal life like a damn boss?" The redhead stopped to smirk at the unintentional wordplay.

The _problem_ was his lack of faith in his own actions. The likelihood that he slipped up and ruined the work relationship was high enough already without adding the complication of something else. In fact, he would probably ruin the _personal_ relationship almost immediately, and there would go the work relationship soon after. No, he wasn't stupid enough to risk it.

Like a damn mind-reader, Roy ignored his silence and charged on. "Can you dial your insecurity back a little? Asking him out isn't a marriage proposal, okay?"

There was a pause, and with neither of them willing to speak anymore, they were caught in a not-so-mature glaring contest.

He backed down. The damn lawyer was a redhead after all, and even though he was bigger, he already suspected that Roy was fully prepared to threaten him with litigation if this conversation slid further south. He wanted to reassure the best friend that he was more than happy to comply and would try his absolute hardest to make things work, except he was also 100% certain he would somehow fuck things up.

"I," he began stammering, "but, I," and swallowed heavily. "I'll... ruin it."

"Right now, there's nothing to ruin," Roy affirmed evenly, posture relaxing a fraction now that he had caved.

He was starting to sound a little desperate. "I'm okay with nothing."

"No one else is," countered the lawyer.

"If he says no?" he asked weakly, already flushing from second—no—third-hand mortification.

"He won't," the other maintained, all too somber and all too promptly.

* * *

It took several days of wretched sleep, but at the end of his shift, his feet carried him to the closed door of the owner's office, and the only thought that cut through the numbness was _this was happening._

Maybe Marth left early. His arm robotically rose to knock on the wood beneath the plate engraved _BOSS_. Just another reminder that he was about to make a horrible decision. Fantastic.

He staved off a hasty retreat by holding himself in place and mentally counting to ten. He had reached eight when the door opened with just as much care as he was methodically listing numbers.

"Ike," Marth stated, looking put together as usual, though maybe a tinge tired because it was almost three in the morning and half the city was in the middle of a fourth REM cycle. Stepping back, the club owner gestured for him to enter while asking routinely, "What can I do for you?"

His stomach squirmed. "I," wait, was he supposed to start with a compliment or something? His mouth went dry as Marth took a half-seated lean against the desk, palms braced to push off the edge if necessary. "Uhm," he mumbled, stalling for time in hopes his brain would catch up. He should have planned more openings, because the one he had settled on was unmistakably too loud, too brusque, too forward in the overbearing silence of the small room.

But he had no other alternative, so here went nothing: "I'm here to ask you on a date."

It was the delicate millimeter rise in the other's eyebrows and unusual blink sequence that had his mind screaming self-deprecating atrocities and waving white flags. And whereas Marth looked a bit surprised, he was downright shocked at himself for successfully getting the words out—and coherently!

"Oh," Marth said, shifting in place and folding one arm beneath the other in a cradle. The shorter man lifted one hand to rest upon the curve of that beautiful face, fingers drifting contemplatively across that set of lips, and his heart began to beat itself into cessation at the unreadable response. Gaze averted to the filing cabinet, Marth mused aloud, "Did someone put you up to this?"

There was no bitterness or suspicion or accusation, but clearly, the club owner concluded there was some unknown third party involved.

 _Not exactly,_ he thought to admit, but that would be a story for another time, because Marth hadn't outright accepted or declined the invitation. "I know this is," _weird? unexpected? inappropriate?_ "sudden and I'm sorry I'm not very good at this." He hoped he conveyed how increasingly shitty he felt for causing the other to withdraw. He took a deep breath and tried again: "But uh, if I haven't already crossed a line, I would, ah," _fuck_ , he was doing so well until this point, "like to spend time with you. Outside of work." There. Better, right?

He was prepared to insist that he wasn't creepy and that he was happy to just grab coffee (or tea, because he'd never actually seen any coffee in the other's office) if dinner was too big of a deal or would a 24-hour diner after work be too divey for Marth who deserved nicer things like long walks on beaches?

Pushing to stand, Marth unfurled from the defensive stance. After too long of a pause, the club owner replied, "All right."

He hadn't even reconciled his instinctive dread and the other's positive confirmation when he abruptly found the shorter man in his space, staring up at him with veiled amusement. "Uh, oh, hi," he stuttered out, vaguely concerned that Marth would register the alarming spike in his temperature due to the close proximity.

"I'm about to get off work," his boss murmured, warm breath ghosting against his ear in a knee-weakening contrast to how cool Marth felt against the heat seeping through his thin T-shirt. He almost collapsed right there, and if predicting his need for support, Marth had taken hold of his arm. "How about now?"

"Now what?" That came out higher pitched than normal, his vocal chords as tense as the rest of his body.

"This date," Marth clarified with a light laugh, like _did you forget already?_ "Or were you thinking of _indecent_ things?" the other asked lowly, placing one hand on his chest, right above his telltale heart.

Roy must have conveniently forgotten to warn him that this relationship was going to ruin _him_ first instead of the other way around.

* * *

 _ **-tbc-**_


	2. Straddle

_**Author's Notes:**_ _Chapter 1 has undergone countless minor tweaks—paragraph organization and phrasing alike. If you read the chapter within the first two days of posting, you may notice some slight differences if you reread._

 _ **Warnings:**_ _If you survived Chapter 1, I imagine you know exactly what you are in for. Un-beta'd._

 _ **Pairing(s):**_ _IkeMarth._

 _ **Disclaimer:**_ _I don't own Super Smash Brothers._

 _ **Summary:**_ _It was easy to ignore the long legs, soft curves, and scraps of lost clothing when he was so in love with the club owner. [Modern AU] -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-_

* * *

Love Story

Chapter 2: Straddle

By SSBBSwords

* * *

Every time he stopped to contemplate the odd picture made by his sitting in a greasy diner at four in the morning with one of the most beautiful people he had ever met in his life, his chest tightened as if his lungs wanted to spontaneously asphyxiate him. Even stranger was the fact that the club owner remained impressively tranquil, sitting across from him with a mug of decaffeinated tea and a plate of French fries. French fries. He couldn't get over it. What a combination.

He hadn't planned on such a precipitous date and subsequently, he had zero material prepped. As evinced by the overwhelming silence, he had doomed this excursion due to his sheer lack of patience and inability to say no to anything Marth asked of him. Ever. Unloading alcohol shipments? Done. Moving tables? Okay. Post-work date? Absolutely.

Damn. They weren't even in an established relationship, and he was already whipped.

Of course, that wasn't what actually bothered him. What bothered him was the horrible job he was doing on this date. He really should have postponed the outing until he assembled a list of conversation topics.

"You're staring at me," Marth pointed out with a hint of a smile and head tilt.

 _Fuck_. "Sorry," he mechanically offered, redirecting his line of sight to the half-finished side of fried potatoes. Really, what a bizarre thing to order alone. He had opted for a full breakfast entree, justified by his need for both the calories and the distraction. Even with his stomach tied in knots, he devoured the meal on autopilot, as opposed to his meal companion who was working at the fries at a slower pace.

Eyes narrowing appraisingly, Marth traced the handle of the ceramic cup absently. "I need you to relax."

He swallowed instinctively, and like a trained dog, he willed himself to release whatever tension he had accumulated since the beginning of time. Taking a deep breath, he let out a measured exhale. "Okay, yeah."

He was in deep trouble. Trouble, because something about the other's body language almost always caused inappropriate blooms of heat and ideas that he had a hard time reining in. So yeah, he had a legitimate reason to be wound up so tight.

Even worse, he was fairly certain that Marth didn't intentionally move that way. Experience had taught him how to read the engineered sway and slink of the female dancers for security purposes, so he had every right to be confused as to why his mind kept interpreting something in Marth's general movement, despite the club owner having never swayed, slunk, crawled, or rolled in his presence.

His limbic system must be out of whack. He was construing something that wasn't there, because Marth's gaze normally had a discomfiting aura of assessment and those fingers ordinarily brushed across surfaces indiscriminately. Right.

A momentary purse of lips, and then the other man asked, "Are you always this nervous?"

For a split second, he thought Marth was asking him about his day-to-day disposition, which made little sense considering he was hired for his constitution of both steely nerves and frame. However, in regards to the current context, he responded, "Yes," because he didn't make a habit of lying. Having found his voice again, he followed up with, "How are you so calm all the time?"

Just hearing those words out loud made him cringe with embarrassment. Someone just kill him now.

He froze while the other's eyes deliberately slid down to his mouth, his throat, his chest, before returning to his face, like pins through the tips of his soul. "I'm not sure what you mean," Marth finally said, taking a sip of, by now, lukewarm tea.

Ignoring the vague disconcertion that ensued, he further clarified, "Nothing seems to faze you."

A corner of the other's lips upturned. "Perhaps I'm simply better at hiding things, Ike."

His heart flopped to one side like the dramatic, easily affected thing that it was. He was probably sweating through his shirt right now. "What do you have to hide?" That seemed like a valid question. Maybe not the best get-a-second-date question, but valid nonetheless.

"My guess," Marth mused in a drawl before finishing in proper enigmatic fashion, "all the things that make you so nervous in the first place."

* * *

They drove separately, paid separately, and very likely existed on two separate planes. And yet, the club owner remained comfortably compatible in his presence. There was no hint of irritation, impatience, or suspended disbelief that he had so little to say and what did get said wasn't all that awe-inspiring around that foot in his mouth.

As the horizon brightened to a nascent gray with the arrival of the sun, he stood by their cars, tongue-tied and unsure of what to do next that wouldn't exacerbate the underlying awkwardness that best described this entire evening. _I had a nice time?_ Did he? He honestly did, but the catch-all platitude was too often a euphemism for _unpleasant_ time, so he floundered, speechless.

Breaking through his reverie of self-grief with that patented decorum, Marth seemed unaware and therefore undeterred by the stifling wordlessness between them. "Thank you," the club owner said, "for the invite."

"I," _think you probably never want to see me again?_ Shit, he needed to get a grip on himself. "I," he tried again, "thanks for," _your time?_ Oh god, this was not an interview, "saying yes." _Fuck._ Was that worse?

"I'm glad you asked," Marth stated effortlessly, the sentiment either extremely genuine or practiced. He hoped for the former, but common sense favored the latter.

"Uhm," he began, but his feet felt like lead, which explained why he then nearly tripped onto the other man in a bid to close the distance and reduce the clumsiness of his next decision. He managed to land a kiss on the other's cheek—no harm, no foul—and he was damn grateful that Marth hadn't moved a muscle or else he would have kissed air. _Should he—_ "Can I ask again?"

He caught something in his lower periphery, just an elevating arm from the shorter man, who must have either decided against the motion or forestalled the reflex (was he about to be smacked? maybe socked in the face?). Doubt swamped his vision and he desperately wanted to erase the past two minutes and try again.

Instead, as a decidedly smoother mimic, Marth took advantage of his immobile condition and their lessened proximity to lean up and press a lingering, precision-laced kiss on his warm face. "Absolutely," Marth answered, faint exhale brushing against the contour of his jaw. "I'll be waiting." There was a glimmer in the other's eyes that could only be a reflection of the illuminating sky.

Compelled to make a better impression sooner rather than later, he blurted out, "Sunday? Dinner." He paused to recall when regular people frequented suitable restaurants. "Seven P.M.?"

Marth's smile left him warm and happy to have said something that seemed to please the other man so much. Mulling over the proposal, the club owner suggested in turn, "How about six?"

There was no way he would forget this, even if bludgeoned in the head in the upcoming days. He nodded. "I'll pick you up."

"Oh?" There was something addicting in the way the other's expression softened when amused. "Security detail _and_ chauffeur service? You'll spoil me."

Unable to help it, he burst out laughing and without thinking, announced, "Fuck, you're cute."

Before his brain kicked in with its constant clamor of insecurities, Marth smirked, voice dropping to a low purr. "You're not too bad yourself."

His stomach bottomed out, and he suddenly needed to adjust himself in his pants. Oh, _real_ fuck. He could barely keep it together, and now Marth had to do _that_? Life wasn't fair.

He didn't know if his expression disclosed his distress of his forever-inopportune onset of an erection, but either way, the club owner gave a muted laugh and stepped away. "See you later," Marth extended with all the politeness of a seasoned professional, except this professional operated best among silhouettes and curtained booths and rumpled fabric.

 _Shit._ Giving a perfunctory wave as the other backed out of the parking lot, he prayed he wasn't showing through his pants. _Of all the times to..._ he grimaced, climbing into his own vehicle. It wasn't as if he couldn't function through this sort of reaction, but right at the end of a first date? A nightmare of utmost proportions.

* * *

He was going to keep it together. He was. Crossed his heart and hoped to die, he was going to keep such an expert level of professionalism that even the crazy perceptive lawyer would presume he had unexpectedly lost all love for their boss.

Yes, this was going to work.

So tonight, as usual, he stopped by to briefly say hello to the club owner, who already was up to elbows in paperwork and gave a cursory nod in return.

Slightly unforeseen in his nebulous plans was the lawyer hunched over Marth's right shoulder, and his inner motivational pep talk skidded to a halt as his first hypothetical test came to pass. Unfortunately, despite his magnificent show of normalcy, it was like the redhead smelt blood in the water, and as he walked away from the office, he heard Roy's declaration behind him: "Be right back. Hey, _Ike_."

He only pivoted to meet the approaching man when he deemed himself out of earshot of Marth. "What's up?"

"That was pretty convincing," Roy acknowledged with a noncommittal shrug.

 _Huh?_ Frowning in confusion, he asked, "What are you talking about?"

The lawyer forced a terse laugh, though not loud enough to carry down the hall. "Are you really not going to—you know what? Never mind." Roy waved the rest of the thought away. For someone shorter than him, the redhead certainly knew how to make him shrink upon himself with that glare. "You're useless." With that, Roy stormed back toward the office with a huff of exasperation.

He would resent that if it didn't just show he really accomplished eradicating the tactless staring. He'd call this a win.

A couple hours later, like clockwork, Marth left the office and joined him by the second-floor railing.

On stage, the performer trailed a generous tipper's hand between her breasts and down her toned stomach before sashaying out of reach with a wink, a few bills richer. He scrutinized the customer for a beat longer to make sure there wouldn't be any brash moves that would entail someone getting tossed out of the establishment.

"How are things?" the other intoned by his shoulder while surveying the main floor.

He risked a glance over and feeling playful, answered, "Nice view."

Any hum of accordance was lost beneath the heavy thrum of music during the performer's set, and the club owner inattentively replied, "So I gather," while studying the dancer's floor sequence.

Unable to infer anything from the other's stoic expression, he lightly nudged Marth, who startled out of preoccupation. "But hey," he flashed what he hoped was the grin the girls called panty-dropping, "view's always better up here."

A blink, and then another, as if the club owner needed some extra time to register the intimation, and then Marth turned to face him, a touch of a knowing smile hinted in the dark shadows of their obscure area. "Balcony seating _is_ expensive," his boss said, all small talk and overt detachment and hidden undertone.

"Company's better too," he quipped, looking away because if they maintained eye contact for any longer, he was liable to grab the other man and do things he threw other people out for.

"I'll take your word for it," Marth murmured, hand coming to rest on his upper arm, a butterfly alighted. With that fleeting brush, the club owner moved away and down the adjacent staircase. As usual.

Only, of course, he was never left this giddy, even when he made a rare, sometimes clever (though most times not) remark to the quotidian query for a status update. Things were looking up, and he didn't mean that in the strip-club sense.

Like a conspicuous homing device, he tracked the club owner's trajectory around the room. One of the bartenders caught his eye from the ground floor and giggled before starting a chat with Marth. As soundless dialogue spilled between them, she gestured in his general direction with the cloth she used to wipe the bar counter.

Even from here, he saw Marth's tongue dart out to wet lips that had no business being damp in surroundings like these.

 _Fuck_. He probably wasn't supposed to see that. Or dwell on it. Or even think about that. _What the hell_.

Needing to reboot to manufacturer settings after that very effective distraction, he stared hard at the stage's load-bearing scaffolding until he stopped visualizing coaxing Marth's tongue into his own mouth.

* * *

His dreams lacked the lucidity of being awake, but in lieu of clarity, they had depth and sensation and freedom from formula.

They were transient clips of moving pictures, of deceptively delicate hands sliding up shirts, down waistbands, behind his neck or shoulders or hipbones. Perhaps he had a mild obsession with Marth's fingers, because even dead asleep, he rendered them artistically in detail, scrabbling to knot into his closer shorn hair, fumbling for a solid hold against sweat-slick skin, staining sheets before interlocking their palms together. It was the phantom brush of lips on his collarbone, the moist trail of tongue alongside his leaping pulse, and graze of teeth against his entrapped earlobe.

He woke up groggy to the noon light streaming around blackout curtains, abdomen tight and uncomfortably hot below the waist. He had been rocking against his mattress if the humid, dissipating heat from friction was any indication. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the flat white ceiling. He was too tired to deal with this.

Kicking the covers aside in a half-hearted attempt to cool down, he reached for his phone, silenced and charging on the bedside table.

' _Where are we going tonight?'_

His phone slipped from his grasp and hit him square in the chest. _Ow, fuck._ With a wince, he fumbled to unlock the screen. This wasn't the first text Marth ever sent since they had to schedule around any intermittent absence from work, but this _was_ the first ever message not related to work and as innocuous as the question was, he didn't anticipate coming face-to-face with reality so early in his day.

He had turned over a dozen different date venues over the past couple of days. Nice restaurants, sure. Quaint cafes, fine. Intimate lounges, okay. But something gnawed at his gut, and if he spent more time thinking about how this was his one and last chance to make a good impression, he felt a little sick to his stomach.

Therefore, he hadn't settled on a final choice, and now he was caught in the dreaded position of admitting he had no plans—not because he didn't care to be proactive, but because nothing seemed good enough. _Double fuck._ His thumbs hovered over the capacitive keyboard, waiting to be struck by inspiration.

Nothing. Damn it.

Well, if he was going to fuck this up every which way, he might as well be polite about it. He methodically tapped out: _Any requests?_ He examined his neatly typed reply in the text box, certain that despite the brevity, he had made some sort of spelling or grammatical error. He finally sent the text only because his phone was starting to blur at the edges, and he set it aside before he could second-guess himself.

In order to pass time and avoid fixating on his dormant phone, he pledged his concentration toward his gym routines. Running and lifting proved to be decent diversions so long as he kept his hands off his mobile device, which he resisted only in spurts of five minutes. It wasn't until he exited the shower post-workout that he found an unread message from Marth.

' _Not in particular, but if you are amenable,_ ' Marth had texted, including a succinct list of three restaurants within a fifteen-minute radius of the other's home.

He gaped at his phone. How was it that Marth managed to both alleviate his prickling anxiety _and_ leave the ball in his court in just one line? _How does he do that?_ If he wasn't already in love with the guy, this wave of relief and gratitude probably clinched it.

' _Sounds great_ ,' he replied concisely, hoping the two words conveyed his honest sentiment toward the convenient list. ' _See you at six_ ,' he added as an afterthought, because he needed to redress the aggravating disparity between the sparsity of his texts and his inner ramblings.

After Googling the hell out of the restaurants upon arriving home, he stood grimly before his closet with the foregone conclusion of his research: he would have to wear a tie. The assortment of restaurants was one degree above casual, and although they didn't involve tiny candle-lit tables with strolling violinists, it was better to be safe than sorry.

He shrugged on his best white dress shirt and referred to the mirror as he looped the length of black fabric around his popped collar. The last time he wore this tie was to his goddamn job interview, and he hoped Marth wouldn't notice because he didn't own a huge array of formal clothes. He also couldn't remember the last time he wore a sports coat, but he felt akin to a little boy playing dress-up.

As he tucked his shirt into his pants, he had a sinking suspicion that his notion of over-dressed was Marth's under-dressed. He was positive that the other's nightly business casual attire was classier than anything he could construct from his limited wardrobe. Then again, his crush could make pajamas look suavely elegant.

In an effort to polish up his comparatively rough appearance, he fiddled with his typical bedhead worth of spikes, wondering if his sporadically used hair wax would be helpful. Warming the smooth product between his rubbing palms was fine; working it through his hair for even distribution was another thing, and he realized his hands were shaking.

He couldn't describe how much he wanted this to go well. Enough that he wanted to throw up, maybe.

Well, better at home than when he went to pick up Marth.

* * *

 _ **-tbc-**_


End file.
